Welcoming the new YPARD Sweden representative: Sunil Abeyasekera

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Sunil is currently undertaking MSc. Studies in Rural Development and Natural Resource Management at the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, Sweden. His research interests focus on the relationship between food security and climate change, and its effect on local livelihoods. He is also interested in the geopolitics of waters, and the implications of the virtual water trade. He will soon be conducting his master’s thesis research within his field of study.

Sunil’s interest in food security and climate change stemmed during his BSc in Chemistry at the University of Surrey, United Kingdom which he completed in 2013. During his studies, he had the opportunity to work at Dow AgroSciences, New Zealand, where he saw the need of pesticides towards achieving food security, and the innovations required to adapt to the increasing prevalence of pests.

After graduating, Sunil worked as a commodities trader for iBasis, London, where he worked in a highly globalized marketplace and strategically increased sales through his business development skills, as well as growing his customers’ accounts. Nevertheless, his interests in climate change and environmental issues persisted and in 2015 he worked at the Institute of Experimental Botany, Czech Republic, where he participated in a land regeneration project. The project involved rehabilitating an old coal processing facility through “green” methods to transform the site into a more safe and hospitable site.

He has recently been working closely with SIANI by assisting the team at events, through hosting the round table discussions and also providing social media coverage. He has also published a blog for SIANI on the FAO, OECD and UNCDF report on “Adopting a Territorial Approach to Food Security and Nutrition Policy”, which outlined a bottom-up approach to rural transformation. Sunil has had the opportunity to meet influential actors during the Youth, Agripreneurship and the Sustainable Development Goals seminar hosted by SIANI and SIDA, and realized the growing demand of youth in agriculture, which he hopes to address as his role as the Sweden Country Representative at YPARD.

“I am excited to get young people engaged in agriculture and food security issues. Becoming the Sweden YPARD country representative signifies that I have joined a globalized network which will help young professionals in Sweden connect with young professionals across the world. I will be using the @ypardsweden twitter account to share agricultural news and events in Sweden, and I will be using my platform to communicate the opportunities available for our future agricultural professionals.

I plan to increase the footprint of YPARD members in Sweden using my affiliation with SLU, organizing workshops and facilitating discussions and forums for young people to get involved in agriculture, food security, rural development and climate change. ”

Sunil is determined to continue the good work of Karolin Andersson, the former representative for YPARD Sweden. We express our profound gratitude to Karolin for the time invested into the country chapter.

Welcome on board Sunil Abeyasekera!

If you are from or based in Sweden, and want to get involved in YPARD Sweden activities, please contact Sunil at ypard.sweden@gmail.com

Youth success stories

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In 2017, YPARD member, Sebastian Mengel, was the recipient of the Master Thesis award for his collaborative research with YPARD, HAFL and CGIAR CRP drylands program on agricultural livelihoods of rural youth in the drylands of Midelt, Morocco.

This testimonial by Dinesh Panday highlights his experience in working with youth in agriculture within the YPARD Nepal community since 2012. He is currently a doctoral graduate research assistant (2016-2019) at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and the former YPARD Nepal country representative.

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Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 13 was created to take urgent action to combat climate change and its impacts to ensure climate resilient agriculture and ICT based business promotional interventions from producer to consumer level. Youth, therefore, can play a supporting role to increase awareness and promote the agenda of SDG for agricultural sustainability to make sure others are aware of it.

Marc Ghislain tells about all the changing scenes in his life as a young professional in agriculture: the anxiety in choosing a profession in agriculture and how his engagement with YPARD helped him find his feet in the agricultural sector.

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The role of young people in helping shift gender perceptions is paramount. We can no longer employ tradition and culture as excuses for allowing basic inequalities between genders to occur and to keep perpetuating themselves. We need to acknowledge and cherish culture, but also acknowledge that culture is not a static entity and that it can, and must, evolve towards a more equal society.

In an era where population, technologies and modernization are fast growing, meeting up with the basic food needs of the population worldwide is one of the greatest challenges nations and international institutions are witnessing. Marc Ghislain shares his views on how the young people can be part of the solution and more importantly in the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goal number two.